


All my Stars Aligned

by the_shipwreck



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Falling In Love, Female Characters, Female Relationships, Fluffy, Hogwarts, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Female Character, LGBTQ Themes, Magic, NWSL, National Women's Soccer League, Quidditch, US Women's Soccer National Team, USWNT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 06:24:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13921266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_shipwreck/pseuds/the_shipwreck
Summary: Christen is determined to be the great quidditch captain that Ravenclaw needs her to be this year. She's equally determined that the Gryffindor captain isn't going to distract her from that goal. (aka, the Christen Press goes to Hogwarts AU that we all need.)





	All my Stars Aligned

The sun was warm and bright – so bright – for a Scottish Saturday afternoon, and Christen Press was trying her best not to stare right into it. Her hand was curved and her palm was tucked as she shielded her eyes, but still kept a careful eye on the activities in the skies above her.

Wizards and witches on brooms swerved to and fro above, lines of Chasers carefully passed the Quaffle along down the pitch, and two Keepers took turns first lazily, then with breakneck speed, looping in and out and around and upside-down through the hoops. Within the cacophony of encouraging, but pointed, instructions, Christen sighed. The sound was organized. The action was intentional. The Gryffindor practice was going so well, and at its helm was a cavalier and radiant Chaser with a whistle and a long brown ponytail, disheveled from exercise and the wind.

Christen had to cock her head, and adjust her hand, so she could focus on the arm gestures the Chaser was making, and as the quidditch team began to muddle their formation to follow her directions, Christen’s gaze softened. Christen’s eyes followed the sweep of the chaser’s hands, and the delicate hovering of her broomstick, unaided by hands to steer it, just light pressure of the Chaser’s knees. It wasn’t for the first time that Christen Press noticed that Gryffindor red and gold suited Tobin Heath as if the colors had been made just for her. The team was in a new formation, and Tobin blew her whistle as she zoomed into her own place within the formation, and bludgers and a quaffle immediately began to fly.

At the same time, something lightly tapped the back of her leg, causing her knee to buckle slightly, her balance to be lost for a moment. From behind her, Christen heard a laugh, and there was soon an arm draped around her shoulder, and familiar smile leaning towards her conspiratorially. “How does the Gryff team look this year? Or were you just checking out their captain?”

Christen elbowed Julie lightly, and leant to pick up the bludger that had hit her, pushing it into her blonde friend’s stomach until she took ownership of the rogue bludger. “ _Obviously_ , I was checking out their team.”

“Guess I should have assumed that you could do both at the same time,” Julie retorted.

“Bad news is,” Christen responded, “the team seems _good_. We’re going to have our work cut out for us.”

The arm slung around Christen’s shoulder heavied its pressure, and Julie squeezed her arm comfortingly. “Thank Merlin we’ve got you at the helm, then, Chris.”

There was another whistle blown, and one by one, practice quaffles, bludgers, and snitches were sent from mid-air to the open and empty ball containers strewn across the pitch grass. Another thing descended rapidly in front of Christen, and she nearly thought she was being attacked by another bludger, only this one wasn’t Julie’s, and the thing was a human holding a quaffle, and then her broom in her opposite hand once she was landed. The human was Tobin Heath, and she was standing no more than two feet away, still windswept, slightly out of breath. Her skin glistened with sweat.

Christen gulped, though she hoped it wasn’t auditory. Julie certainly felt it, though, and immediately dropped her arm from Christen’s shoulder.

“Hey, Tobin,” she said casually. “Chris, I’m going to go round up the troops.”

Christen nodded, and Julie left.

“So, you’re starting off the year with spying on us, huh?” Tobin said, a teasing lilt to her voice and a smile hidden behind her efforts to maintain serious composure.

Christen immediately tensed; that was two people accusing her of spying!

“No, not at all! I wasn’t…” she stuttered, before Tobin interrupted with a laugh.

Christen relaxed. “It’s a quarter past,” she said, outstretching her arm with her watch on it, tilting its face towards Tobin. “If you want to run your practice past your scheduled time and put on a show, I’m all for it.”

Tobin cracked a smile, one of those big ones, that could make even the Arithmancy professor relax a little, and Christen felt like she’d done something good, something right, by making Tobin smile. A smile of her own grew on her lips, and the girls stood in silence for a moment.

Tobin licked her lips, then something behind Christen caught Tobin’s attention. She pointed, and there was a rag-tag group of second years hauling big boxes of practice balls towards the pitch, while two accompanying third years used weighting spells every time a second year tried to use their weeks old Levitation Charm to move the boxes with magic instead of brute strength.

“Looks like your team is putting on a show too,” Tobin gestured, nudging her chin in the direction of a plummeting box and a second year’s head narrowly avoided.

Christen turned and exhaled loudly. “Not a very good one, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll have to come back for a good one then,” Tobin said.

“That’s assuming we ever have a good one,” Christen said, clenching her kit shirt in her hand anxiously.

Tobin shrugged. “What Amy said to me when she graduated was, have them work as a team first. The quidditch comes second.” Tobin paused. “And that’s the last of any advice you get from me, my new nemesis.”

Tobin scanned the field, and found a teammate wrestling a last box of practice balls closed. “Kling, got space for one more quaffle in there?”

The short chaser nodded, and leaned the box wide open, holding the lid at a wide angle. Tobin let the quaffle fall from her hands to her feet, and she kicked the ball up twice with one foot, then again with her other foot, before she neatly kicked the ball perfectly into thebox. Kling slammed the lid shut.

 “Wrap it up, team!” Tobin yelled to the Gryffindors still picking up their brooms, water bottles, and extra pads. She waved her arm, herding them back towards the castle. “Ravenclaw is here, and they’re _punctual!”_

Tobin flashed Christen a last teasing grin.

“Thank you,” Christen silently mouthed to the retreating Gryffindor captain, before she spun on her heel to meet the struggling second years and their unhelpful older peers twenty yards away.

 

\------------------------------

 

The Ravenclaw Quidditch team took to the skies, and with the first warm up activity, Christen was starting to take Tobin’s advice to heart. Most of her team was comprised of strong fliers, of teammates who could debate strategy from night til noon, of those who could assess the most effective use of a slice or a sweep with their broom, of teammates with whom Christen had played for many years before.

But with the departure of old favorites as they graduated and moved on from Hogwarts Quidditch, and with the addition of new, younger students, the balance had shifted. Christen hadn’t realized before how much work Ali must have put into that sort of dynamic every year. That sort of thing must have come naturally to Ali, or even more likely, she made the impossible look easy.

Through each failed activity and the schedule that, though originally pristine, had quickly turned to mayhem, Christen kept a running tally of things she would need to do after practice. Most importantly, it included a Floo call to Ali as soon as the former captain was available, and figuring out what the heck team bonding sessions for a group of thinkers like Ravenclaws would look like.

Christen was starting to think that she, herself, was a terrible fit for this job, that Ali had left a void too large to fill, that a Quidditch captaincy along with prefect duties and her usual micro-attention to her studies would be too much to handle.

And then Sofia, a brand new recruit to the team, got knocked off her broom from ten feet off the ground, and she was _fine_ , but as Christen was delegating somebody to walk Sofia up to see Madam Pomfrey, and simultaneously enchanting the bludgers to move at 75% of their normal speed, a fourth thought entered her brain. She was a Ravenclaw too; she could think through all of this just as well as anybody else on this team could.

Christen took a deep breath, and she closed her eyes, and when her eyes were closed, she saw Tobin Heath’s big smile.

“Team first, Quidditch second,” Christen muttered under her breath resolutely.

Christen blew her whistle, and all play and flying slowed to a standstill. She waved everybody in, and onto the ground next to her, next to where Sofia had been plucked out of the sky by a wildly thrown quaffle.

“Let’s wrap up fifteen minutes early. Once all the balls are secured, you can hit the showers.” A few people cheered softly. Christen smiled, and held up a finger to put her team on pause. “In exchange, though, you owe me and each other a group meal. Can the first people to dinner tonight reserve the end of the Ravenclaw table for all of us? I’ll try to get there early too. And don’t be late. Ravenclaws are _punctual._ ”


End file.
